By PATRICIA DONOVAN

Steven Kurtz, professor of visual studies who is considered
“the grandfather of interventionist art,” is the new
chair of the Department of Visual Studies in the College of Arts
and Sciences.

Kurtz, a founding member of the internationally renowned art and
theory collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), succeeds Millie
Chen, professor of visual studies, who served as department chair
for the past four years.

Kurtz, who came to UB in 2002 from Carnegie Mellon University,
is best known for interventionist art, described by the
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA) as art that
“critiques, lampoons, interrupts and co-opts; art that acts
subtlety or with riotous fanfare, and art that agitates for social
change using magic tricks, faux fashion and jacked-up lawn
mowers.”

Kurtz’s artistic interventions are in the fields of
electronic civil disobedience and Bio Art, a practice in which he
works with live tissues, bacteria, living organisms and life
processes using biotechnologies like genetic engineering, tissue
culture and cloning.

He is the author or co-author of several books produced by the
CAE, most recently, “Critical Art Ensemble:
Disturbances,” a landmark handbook for activists in art,
theory, science and politics launched in London, UK, on Oct. 4,
where Kurtz currently is a visiting artist at the Goldsmiths
College of Art, University of London.

Kurtz says his administrative work in the Department of Visual
Studies is cut out for him, in part because undergraduate
recruitment is more difficult than it used to be.

“There was a time when we were deluged with undergraduates
from New York City,” he says, “but these days,
they’re staying downstate, perhaps because of the cost of an
out-of-town education for families struggling with job security or
unemployment.

“Nevertheless, there will always be people who are driven
to express themselves through the arts,” Kurtz says,”
and they will find a way to do it.

“Students from the more ‘comfortable’ classes
benefit from families that often will compensate the graduate who
faces difficulty making a living,” he says.

“For art students whose families are engaged in economic
struggle, however, there is a sense that there must be vocational
dimension to their training. They may be attracted to fields like
commercial art, graphic design or teaching,” Kurtz says,
“something they can turn into a job.”

He says he hopes to increase undergraduate enrollment and
continue development of the department’s very successful
China exchange programs established by Chen.

“We have excellent programs and facilities for whatever
art form a student might want to pursue,” he says,
“including those that challenge assumptions about the
political sphere, the economy, science, the body and
technology.”

On the graduate side, he says the department is doing fine,
enrollment-wise.

“Our MFA program has always been robust and we now have
four PhD students on board. With our upscale gallery space,
including the UB Art Gallery, the Anderson, the new downtown
project gallery that allows large-scale and group work, and the
return of the student gallery, we have a lot to offer,” he
says, citing “an excellent faculty,” some of whom, like
Kurtz, hoist our profoundly commoditized, technologized,
restrictive culture on its own petard.

In addition to his provocative art, Kurtz is known for the USA
Patriot Act controversy that began with his arrest by the FBI in
2004 (charges eventually were dropped) for possessing materials
that were to be used for “Marching Plague,” a project
sponsored by the Arts Catalyst, London, one of the United
Kingdom’s most distinctive arts organizations focused on
experimental work that critically engages science.

His exceptional story, which raised the profile of
interventionist art and the cause of artistic independence
throughout the world, was told in the film “Strange
Culture ,” about which The New York Times wrote,
“In its creative assessment of our current judicial climate,
the need for artistic freedom has seldom seemed so
urgent.”